


Look on the Plague Maiden and Despair

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 15:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11405517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: Star's sick. Marco does his best to make her feel better but when a princess of Mewni feels under the weather, well... things get a little weird.





	Look on the Plague Maiden and Despair

**Author's Note:**

> More fun for all! I hope everyone enjoys and is ready for season three. I'm super excited. Plus fire school's over so... also exciting!

Some girls are actually kinda cute when they are sick. Their noses and cheeks blush just the right, appealing pink, fever dampens their hair just enough to make the forehead shine in low light and each sneeze is a precious kitten's mew. Those girls are usually Disney princesses, or her mom--which, Star reflected, aren't super far from being the same thing. Moon may not have ever charmed bluebirds down from the trees to perch on her armored shoulders, or at least Star had not seen her do so, but the Undaunted Queen of Mewni did have that undeniable, lazy grace about the way she moved, spoke and even rested.

Star, on the other hand? Star was not one of those girls. When she got sick things got deeply ugly fast. Her cheek emblems, sweet little hearts most of the time, alternated between red, raw scabs that seeped blood and bioluminescent indicators of a fever high enough to make her genuinely squirrely. She did not sneeze cutely or cough delicately with one gloved hand held to her lips, either. Star emitted either banshee shrieks that sent her laser puppies fleeing for their lives or deep, wet barking that sounded like her lungs were tearing loose from their surfacta.

Her nose, she was certain, was not an ideal nose for an ailing princess, either. Mom's poems, and the books in her schoolroom during her formative years had been remarkably silent on the subject of royal mucus (they might have, Star suspected, have been far more interesting had they covered it) but she doubted hers would pass inspection in any case. The stuff in Star's head was thick, custardy and glowed the same diseased green as mushrooms grown in the shadow of dark magic. It also gave off a noxious tase and smell she could not banish from the back of her throat. All in all? Mewni's royal heir felt like poop and couldn't wait for the day (please for the love of corn don't let this last longer than a day!) to be over.

She couldn't keep feeling too sorry for herself, though, because Marco had just breached her doorway with a tray balanced on his carefully folded arms. White, delicate curls wafted from the mouth of a bowl seated on the tray and, in spite of how awful she felt, Star felt the beginnings of water in her mouth. Unless, she amended, that wasn't some new, horrible symptom to add to her already long list of miseries.

Star closed her eyes (they were already swollen near shut so it didn't take much effort) and sighed. "Mmm... dat smell good. What have you brought for this poor, dying girl's last meal?"

"A, you're not dying," Marco said, "and B, it's my Abuelita's special, secret chicken soup. There's tons of good stuff in it. Chiles, cumin, cilantro... all that. And it'll break apart that gunk in your nose quicker than penicillin."

Star's hands flew to cover her face. "I don't care what kind of pen you said it was. You are not sticking it up my nose!"

He chuckled. "Penicillin, Star. It's a kind of mold."

Star wrinkled her brow. "You're gonna stick mold up my nose?"

"No, it's medicine. You drink it or eat it."

"I'm not sure I wanna drink or eat mold, either. That's when cheese..." She wobbled her hand. "That's when cheese starts gettin, well, it starts gettin kinda funky, Marco."

He shook his head. "We're getting side tracked. You're not getting penicillin so it doesn't matter what it is. You're getting my Abuelita's special soup and believe you me it's gonna be the best thing you've ever tasted."

"Better than birthday corn souffle?"

"Er, I haven't had birthday corn souffle," he said, "but I'm gonna go ahead and say 'probably.'"

"Well," she said, "if it's that good I'm definitely gonna take me a little nibble or three." She does. A beatific smile spreads across her face. "Mmm. Das as good as dat smells. You're grandma is some kinda kitchen witch. She's a kwitch."

"Not a witch," he said, "just an abuelita with some good old fashioned know-how."

"What else would a witch be?" Star said. "I'mma get me some more." She drained most of her bowl in a long, loud slurp.

That's when the sneeze erupted. It was, in itself, super cute, even kittenish--not like her earlier shrieks at all. The result, however, proved anything but.

The cloud of goblins, kobolds, gremlins and other abominations that emerged from Star's nostrils pranced wildly on the air. Colored in all possible hues (and some that seem impossible) the creatures writhed, danced, howled and jibbered. Long talons toyed with strands of Star's hair or ruffled through Marco's dark locks. Two burst into violence and, when one tore the other in half, a third creature emerged from the top half and from the bottom half a pile of intestines spilled and then joined in the revelry independent of the twitching legs. The mixture of Mewni's magic and Earth's germs had proven... explosive, to say the least.

Madness swirled around a hurrican of flesh, horns and slime. At the center of them all a tall woman stood in a cloud of dark, stringy hair and flying, ragged skirts. With her face wearing death and deep-set eyes that promised the grave Star knewthis could be only one creature. Even an ignorant lump of coal would have known!

She raised her cadaverous arm to point at Marco. "Look on the Plague Maiden and despair, mortal. Would you know the hour of your death?"

He pushed a clinging gremlin away. "That sounds like it would be kind of, like, a terrible idea."

"No living man may behold Morowa and go on without knowing how, when and why he will die."

"But it would be super better if we didn't do that," Marco said. "How about you have some of Abuelita's soup instead?"

"October 15th, 2019."

"Huh?"

"October 15th, 2019/ That is the last day you will taste her soup."

Marco grew pale. The bowl slipped from his fingers to clatter against the floor. "N-no. No. You're lying."

"I do not lie. The geas laid on me prevents it."

"Which could also be a lie if there's no geas," Marco said. "And either way you're frustratingly unclear."

"Should I speak another day? How about your mother, father, your friend Jackie? What about the Princess of Mewni?" She motioned to where Star lay on the bed. "This could be her last night on life."

Star forced herself up on an elbow. "Nope. Not my last night."

"Are you so confident, Star of Mewni?"

"Well," she said, "you are the embodiment of my illness in a creepy, magical-lady form, right?"

"I am."

"Well, if I were gonna die, tonight, I wouldn't be sick anymore and you would cease to exist. You would die, too. And I'm betting you'd be way more super freaked out by that than you are."

Morowa grew quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, "You are right, Star of Mewni. To harm you would be to harm myself. The balance is delicate. As you grow sicker, I grow stronger. But if you die? I die." A leperous grin spread across her face. 'But I have no such strictures placed on me regarding this one." She began a drift towards Marco with agonizing slowness.

He flinched when her fingers stopped a hair's breadth from brushing his cheek. It was not the proudest moment in Marco Diaz's life but... the Plague Maiden is revulsion made ethereal flesh. He smelled the wet, sticky, verdant stink of mucus rising off her and fought how the gorge rises up in him. Do not vomit, here, he told himself. Don't give that to her. Don't let her win. Don't give her the...

The thought trailed off. Don't give her the what? Does this thing even feel satisfaction? Is she capable? It's a question for another time. He does know on some level, though, that if she touches him he won't get the chance to ponder it later because he won't make it to October 15th, 2019 to find out what her dire prediction had been... He won't even make it to the next morning.

Star's voice cut the stillness. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Morowa regarded her with glittering, dark, fearful eyes. 'What are you saying, Star of Mewni? Why would I stop?"

Star, her face a grim mask, pressed the tip of her wand against her throat. "I am a daughter of Aeschylia and Hippocrita, twin queens of Mewni and great healers both of them. Their example has taught me that somtimes to cure an illness it must be cut out. A tumor must be cut out. Sometimes, even..." She gulps. "Sometimes an afflicted arm or leg has to be cut off."

She heaved a deep breath. "Now... if you had controlled yourself I would have let you linger as long as your natural course demanded, until my body's magical field set itself right. I would have let you do that. If you lay a finger on Marco, though..."

Her eyes drifted to the wand pressed deeply enough into the soft skin of her throat to leave a mark. She struggles to find the words but cannot. "If you so much as lay a finger on Marco, sister, it's not gonna be pretty. Trust me."

Morowa hissed, shrieked and writhed in place. She did not move so much as a hair. Star asked again, "Do you understand me?"

The Plague Maiden sighed like air escaping a cracked valve. "Yes, heir to Mewni's throne. I understand."

"There's a good girl. Now... how's about you get back where you belong? In my nose."

"As you command, Star of Mewni." Morowa and all her familiars atomized and, on a fine, green mist trickle up Star's nostrils. The results are predictably unpleasant to watch.

When the show finally ended, Star and Marco collapsed onto the bed together. "Wow," he said. "Wow. Jeez. That was intense."

"No kidding, bud," she said. "So, uh... so... how's about you make me some more of that grandma soup?"

"Right now? After all that?"

"Marco, I want to feel better and have that chick outta me, like, pronto."

"Good point," he said. "Want it bad enough to take some penicillin?"

"The moldy cheese stuff? Ugh. You've got a sick sense of humor, Marco Diaz."

"It'll be less painful than cutting it out, like you said."

"Oh, okay... fine. I'll take the moldy cheese stuff as long as you make me some more grandma soup."

"Sure thing," he said, and did. They shared the pot sitting together on her bed and talking late into the night. By morning, Morowa's visit seemed like nothing more than an awful dream and Star could hardly tell that she'd ever been sick at all.


End file.
